(Obviously, only one person on my friends list can’t see this 🙂
You know, it would probably have been better if I had decided I wanted to get Takaza a Playstation 2 for Christmas a little earlier than last week. The consumer frenzy is on and I can’t believe how quickly these things are getting snapped up. At lunch today I ran over to Beast Buy in Gurnee. They got a shipment of 48 PS2’s last night and they assured me that they had quite a few in stock. I got there at 11:50 AM and the clerks were as shocked as I was to find that they had just sold the last one. Well, that was a waste of time. I’ve checked Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Game Stop, EBGames, Target, Wal Mart, and probably a couple of other places I’m forgetting – no dice.
If anyone in the Chicago or RTP areas comes across a PS2 in stock (new, slimline design), call me immediately on my cell phone – chances are that I will ask that you buy it on the spot and I’ll reimburse you. Thanks!
I’ve got some time to kill this afternoon before dinner with folks in Aurora. I’ll poke around.
Keep us posted. I may do some shopping tonight, and there are multiple GameStop, Toys R Us, Beast Buy, and Circuit City stores by me.
I’m planning on going up to Racine tonight, too… I’ll check the Best Buy, etc up there, too.
There wasn’t even shelf space for them at the Beast Buy in Champaign….But I’ll look around tonight.
Did you check Fry’s? I may make it by there this weekend anyway, and can take a peek…
Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to get by there last night. Do please let me know if you have any luck, though!
I’ll keep my eyes open down here, Dunc 🙂
I tried
I almost hate to admit this. I got to our local Best Buy here in Athens, um, 5 minutes too late. I called, they had 1 left after having 58 units 6 hours previously. I then checked the other possibilities in town and nothing was happening. I’m sorry.
Re: I tried
Hey, no problem. That seems to be a common problem. Thanks for trying anyway!
I know I’m not in the desired area, but having read this I couldn’t help but look… all sold out of PS2s at the Salmon Bay Freddies, too.
Thanks for looking, anyway!
Circuit City, Beast Buy, Target, two GameStops and two Toysauruses later, I have not located a PS2.
The general consensus seems to be that Sony has not made enough, and that demand for games like Grand Theft Auto has resulted in a surge of interest in the console itself. The console is literally evaporating off the shelf.
Estimates of availability ranged from “after Christmas” to “we might get a few dozen in on Tuesday, first come, first served.”
Yeah, I’d heard the comment about Sony underproducing – even the New York Times had a piece on it (Bugmenot).
Thanks for checking, though! I really appreciate it.
You can never tell. And sometimes you can’t win for trying. They sold 700,000 last month. That means they produced 700,000 last month.
The original PS2 launch was screwed up when an earthquake damaged a chip fabrication facility in Taiwan, I believe.
Sony shipped the first half-million consoles to the US on specially chartered FedEx planes to make the launch date. At great cost. If production hadn’t been interrupted, they would have shipped by ship, much more cheaply.
This happens all the time. It’s almost impossible to address the surge of interest in a new American fad without overinvesting in manufacturing capacity. Apple has that problem all the time. Blizzard had it with World of Warcraft. Now it’s Sony’s turn.
I’ll keep my eyes peeled. Perhaps if I work from home Tuesday, I’ll hit the neighborhood GameStop early.
Just curious…does he have an older PS2 model…and beyond the slimmer case…what’s the difference. Is this just Sony trying to make some money this Christmas ahead of the PS3 coming out next year or is this really an improvment over the older version that I have.
*hugs* Good luck on your quest though. 🙂
Well, the reason I specified a new slimline one is because at this point the only older models out there are either used or refurbished, and I didn’t want to get those.
As far as improvements, according to this review (and others I’ve seen) that while this is not a bad unit to start with, you’re better off waiting for a PSX next year if you already have one of the older models. The new unit has online gaming connections onboard, and a top-loading, spring-loaded door for discs vs. the original motorized tray. I think it also is supposed to have less problems playing all the various types of DVD’s out there, too. I had heard rumors of a better CPU, but it doesn’t look like that’s true.
And thanks! No luck so far, but we’ll see how things go.
Neither of the GameStop guys even offered me a used or refurbished unit. So I suspect those are gone too.
Not that refurb is that bad a deal. Those at least have been back to the factory, went through testing again, and have a factory warranty and box. My refurb TiVo has had zero problems in all these years.
For a gift yeah, new is best. Refurb is cheap. Used is totally unacceptable.